When Parenting Turns Into Survival (“mess around and find out” parenting)

I keep hearing about this new thing called “mess around and find out” parenting. It’s meant to be tough love where you let your kid mess around, they’ll find out the hard way.
Apparently, it’s trending. I have seen a glimpse of it on social media and honestly it made my stomach twist.
Something about it feels like a collective cry from parents who are tired, frayed and probably very overwhelmed.

What’s Really Happening Underneath

What’s underneath this “find out” way of parenting isn’t just attitude or discipline. It’s seems to me that it is dysregulation. It’s a person’s nervous systems pushed past capacity.

When our bodies feel unsafe or overwhelmed, they reach for control or anything to create order. That’s the fight response showing up in parenting clothes. It’s a survival response.

As a parent this might look like getting louder. Sharper. We threaten consequences that sound reasonable in the moment but feel hollow later. It’s a legacy of people who have never had the space to pause, to breathe, to repair.

And what breaks my heart is that this is being sold as strength, as boundaries or “real” parenting. But to me, what I hear, beneath the bravado, is exhaustion.

I Think What We’re Really Longing For

What if beneath all of it (you know, the parenting trends, the methods, the “what works” posts) we’re just longing to feel safe in our bodies again?

Maybe this is less about how to parent, and more about how to stay human while parenting. Because sometimes it feels like the culture has forgotten that we’re allowed to be human.

We don’t need to swing between permissive and punitive. We need to remember what it feels like to pause. To be the adult whose grounded nervous system can hold a storm (not perfectly), but enough.

And perhaps it’s more than safety we’re searching for. It’s the slow work of tending to old wounds and healing in relationship. Of being seen and normalised in our experience, so that we no longer have to hold it all alone.

If You Feel That Sick Feeling Too

If hearing about this kind of parenting makes something in your body tighten, that’s a signal worth listening to. It might be your stomach turning or your breath catching a little. That’s your body telling you that something about this doesn’t feel right.

And if you’ve found yourself in that same place before snapping, raising your voice, seeing your child’s face drop please don’t let shame take over. You’re probably tired. Tired in a way that sits deep, beyond sleep. Tired from holding everything together and still feeling like it’s never quite enough.

You’ve been carrying more than any one body was meant to hold. Your own unmet needs, your child’s tender emotions, the endless noise of what everyone says motherhood should look like. Then there’s everything else the work, the cost of living, caring for aging parents, the quiet grief of a changing planet.

And for many, this weight is even heavier. For mothers who live without safety nets or social privilege. For those navigating racism, migration, disability, or the daily strain of simply trying to survive within systems that weren’t built to hold them.

It’s no wonder our bodies sometimes reach a breaking point.

Maybe This Is the Real Strength

Real strength doesn’t look like quick comebacks or perfect control. It looks like staying open, even when everything in you wants to shut down. It’s choosing connection instead of power. It’s letting softness be your boundary, not your weakness.

Every time you pause instead of react, or return after losing it, you’re showing your child something important that love can hold mistakes.

Maybe parenting begins again right there. Not in proving a point. But in finding our way back to ourselves, one breath, one messy, tender moment at a time.